> But if all you are going to use on Haiku is ported software that ignores native APIs then what is the point of using an OS with less hardware support and features?
Haiku already has its own third-party 'native apps' that directly use its APIs and also promotes them in HaikuDepot [0]. Users from other OSes will always ask for other apps and if the OS has a 'modern browser' even when WebPositive is based on the same technology as Safari. i.e, WebKit. But they'll still ask for Firefox and Chrome.
The fragmentation argument can be made from a maintenance point of view. For typical platform support, it's easier to maintain and target one OS that has a single unified stack and SDKs (GUI toolkit, sound, input APIs, etc) than to do this on multiple distros and to only officially support 5 Linux distros, which is why Windows and Mac are always targeted easily. There is no 'standard' SDK on Linux distros, which is why one user could be using ALSA or OSS, X11, XWayland or pure Wayland with Sway, etc. Haiku has first-party default system components which it maintains.
It also sits in middle of macOS and Linux, being that its open-source like Linux and has a standard defaults and a SDK like macOS. So maintenance-wise, maintaining one of each OS like macOS or Windows sounds less expensive than targeting 3 separate distros here.
Ok, first of all, if you are targeting Linux you can target ALSA and X11 and your application will work on any desktop Linux environment. OSS hasn't been relevant for decades and unless we're talking about some embedded system, all Wayland desktops also support X11 applications and will continue to support it for the foreseeable future.
Second, what you point out about having its own third party apps is correct and i know about what Haiku is - i even did some quick port of my older 3D game engine some years ago [0] for fun.
But none of that answer the question you quoted. What you are writing is from the perspective of a programmer who may want to target Haiku or works on Haiku. My question is from the perspective of a user.
As a programmer i'd target Haiku out of fun since there is no practical reason to target it. As a user i'd also use Haiku for fun since it has too many limitations to have any practical use (except perhaps if all your work can be done via the console and you connect with ssh to some remote Linux server to do your work).
But if you are not using it for any practical use (since for that you'd use Windows or Linux), why bother with anything else than the native APIs for your desktop applications on a desktop focused operating system where applications are meant to integrate with the system itself?
Well the development team is incredibly small working on an 'entire OS' not just a kernel, in their spare time with little resources and funds compared to other open-source projects who have many more paid contributors working on a sub-system part of a Linux distro. I'd say the fact that Haiku is still alive and has most of the essential software is impressive given its situation.
Imagine if Haiku had fully funded developers working on the OS. It would be out a lot sooner with more features, but obviously that isn't the case.
Haiku already has its own third-party 'native apps' that directly use its APIs and also promotes them in HaikuDepot [0]. Users from other OSes will always ask for other apps and if the OS has a 'modern browser' even when WebPositive is based on the same technology as Safari. i.e, WebKit. But they'll still ask for Firefox and Chrome.
The fragmentation argument can be made from a maintenance point of view. For typical platform support, it's easier to maintain and target one OS that has a single unified stack and SDKs (GUI toolkit, sound, input APIs, etc) than to do this on multiple distros and to only officially support 5 Linux distros, which is why Windows and Mac are always targeted easily. There is no 'standard' SDK on Linux distros, which is why one user could be using ALSA or OSS, X11, XWayland or pure Wayland with Sway, etc. Haiku has first-party default system components which it maintains.
It also sits in middle of macOS and Linux, being that its open-source like Linux and has a standard defaults and a SDK like macOS. So maintenance-wise, maintaining one of each OS like macOS or Windows sounds less expensive than targeting 3 separate distros here.
[0] https://depot.haiku-os.org/